


Not The Time

by musesofaninsomniac



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Crack Treated Seriously, Death ships it, Fluff and Angst, Geralt of Rivia and the language of hms, M/M, you could read this as platonic but why would you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:27:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22964629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesofaninsomniac/pseuds/musesofaninsomniac
Summary: “No,” Jaskier said promptly, at the same time Geralt once again expressed his own opinion on the subject.“The both of you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way this works,” Death said.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 17
Kudos: 555





	Not The Time

“Witcher,” Death said.

“Hmm,” said Geralt, flicking a strand of blood-soaked hair out of his eyes. It didn’t really help, as everything around him was properly blood-soaked now, slipping from the leather of his armor to pool and itch on the exposed skin of his wrists.

This isn’t the first time Geralt’s met Death, of course—not even the first time this year—though usually, they don’t exactly meet face-to-face (or face to hood, as it were). He doesn’t hold the not-infrequent meetings against the other, like he’s sure a normal man would, like he doesn’t hold this meeting against them. It’s rare to meet another professional of such talent on the road.

“Do not lay those swords down, Geralt of Rivia,” Death’s voice was not precisely that, more a vibrating hum Geralt felt somewhere under his ribs, where blood was still trickling almost lazily down his side, in the bruises speckling his chest, but it still sounded—almost—sad. “I am not here for you, yet.”

Geralt’s shoulders stiffen. Slowly, he takes another step further into the room, the door shutting next to him with a quiet thump. Not necessary for freedom of movement, but it gave him a clearer line of sight to the left of the room. His lips tighten.

Jaskier lay on the crumped linen and hay of the narrow bed, flushed and unnervingly still. Geralt could smell the sourness of his sweat and hear the rattling of his breath from where he stood, shallow and all but dragging from his lungs. His eyes lift to the black-clad figure at the bedside.

“No,” he said, the word coming from deep in his chest, iron in the dark and cold of the room. 

The boundless void under Death’s clock tilts, just slightly, to the left. 

“Come again?” they say.

Geralt bares his teeth.

Death, if they can, sighs. “Fuck,” they say.

* * *

The fever had been—sudden. Unexpected. ~~Terrifying.~~

Jaskier hadn’t really complained of anything, at first. Which is to say, he complained about the sun, the dark, the heat, the cold, the dust, the mud, all while strumming those seemingly endless ballads on that equally resilient lute of his, but he hadn’t spoken of any real discomfort.

A tickle in his throat, only, where the notes normally ran clear, easily fixed with some rest and the last of that tea, he had assured him. (Jaskier’s indignant squawk on Geralt’s praises of “blessed silence, finally,” had left a smile tugging at his mouth the rest of the evening). A chill, simply alleviated with just one more blanket filched from Roach’s saddlebags, he’d winked, and when he’d wormed his way under Geralt’s arm that evening, tucking his head into his his neck against the wind, the witcher hadn’t protested. The loss of appetite, well, he could hardly be expected to eat _that_ without salt at least, as he’d said, and he was always shoving the bigger portions of food onto Geralt’s plate, anyway, as if Geralt wouldn’t _notice_. There hadn’t been anything to see. Nothing to watch for.

Yet.

Geralt had woken on the dark edge of morning, when the sky was still deep purple, to the first muffled cough. Reflexively, he’d taken a quick breath in, and the _scent_ —

Geralt was up before he knew he was moving. He’d knelt, and shook the other’s shoulder, gently. Jaskier had rolled, or rather fallen, onto his back, his head heavy and his eyes still closed, hairline dark with sweat. The heat pouring off him had seared through Geralt’s hand, up through the rest of his skin, where it knocked against something vast in his chest, yawning and terrible. Jaskier’s mouth had been open, his breathing wet and cracked.

Geralt doesn’t remember packing the campsite, or hoisting him onto Roach’s back, or urging the horse onto the road itself. Just the ride, and the blur of the path, and the limp feel of the bard, silent and burning against his chest.

* * *

“I do not come where I am not needed, Witcher,” Death says. The window behind them bathes only part of the room in thin silver, a small band of light that falls over Geralt but leaves the rest of the room dark and hot. “It is simply his time. What do you expect to do?”

“Hmm,” Geralt says, because—yes, he doesn’t really have a plan, as the word is typically defined. More a goal, really. It’s more preparation than he typically gets, all things considered.

Somewhere in the shadowed recesses behind the both of them, Jaskier takes in a single, rasping breath. One more. And another.

He shrugs his shoulders at the hooded figure, hiding the wash of pain that spreads over his entire upper body with the ease of long practice. 

Death does not look impressed.

“I am not one of your monsters to slay in the dark,” their next words shivering along his blood would have sounded incredulous, actually, if something of Death’s nature could still be tempted to incredulity. “Your swords will not cut me. Your signs will not burn me. Your—”

Geralt snorts, and the offended silence that follows is probably deserved, if he’s honest, but his tolerance for flowery speech is limited at best (limited really to one individual) and he _gets_ the _point_ , thanks.

“Waiting will do nothing, Geralt of Rivia,” Death says, after a long, fraught pause, broken only by Jaskier’s stuttered, too-short breaths. “You could not outlast me if you had all the time in the world. And as I Know—” the emphasis on that last word ached in his bones. “that is not the case.”

Drops of blood litter the floorboards at his feet, and Geralt can feel the coldness of his own skin, sucking what little light remains in the room away from his sight. Still, he doesn’t shift his vigil or his eyes away from Death’s hood. It isn’t as though he hadn’t known. He’d been at this a long time, long enough to know—to feel—a fatal wound when he saw one. He was ready for his own time to come. But not—

Jaskier’s breath creaked, a winding screech that would have had him wincing if he could, bemoaning at the lack of harmony. All light had disappeared from the narrow space.

“What’s happening?” the bard’s voice is gossamer, a reed on the wind. “Geralt?”

“Julian Alfred Pankratz,” Death says, all weight and sorrow and pride. “We meet at last.”

* * *

It was magical. Of course it fucking was.

Geralt had barely resisted hitting the mage who’d told him, only out of practice with older, far more irritating mages (See? He learns). He’d settled Jaskier into the last vacant room at the first inn he’d come across in a town large enough to have a healer, a room, said healer had shortly informed him, which was vacant only because its past occupant had been carried off by the bard’s same fever only weeks earlier. Something blown onto the wind, spiteful and unforgiving.

He’d asked the usual question, tipping Jaskier back onto the bed with one gentle hand when the bard had struggled to sit up against the pillows, protesting that he was _fine, feeling better already, and that this was a bit of overreaction, Geralt, and my, your hands really are quite large, aren’t they—_

“Stop it?” he’d been a bit grateful for the mage’s interruption at that point. “The mage who cast this curse is long gone. Dead, from his own stupidity. The fever…it is possible to cure it, but the antidote…well.”

A particular kind of herb, one that grew wild and sly in the crags at the top of the nearby mountain. Guarded now by something out of nightmare, as the townsfolk would tell it, probably borne with the same curse that brought forth the sickness. No one who had gone forth to find it had since returned alive.

Jaskier had started babbling nearly immediately after the healer had left, talking almost without any pause for breath, that _yes, while this certainly seemed like it was exactly Geralt’s brand of stupidity, he was already feeling quite well, no really, he’ll be on his feet in no time, this was really too much trouble to go to for a flower, are you listening to me, Geralt, no, I don’t want tea, what did you put in here—_

He’d slurped at the tea without pausing in the litany, not appearing to notice as his eyes grew heavier, his voice weak, still mumbling as he’d sank into sleep. Geralt had caught the cup a moment before it would have hit the sheets, his other hand drawing the blankets carefully over the bard’s body. 

Geralt had entertained brief, wistful thoughts of easily available goods, purchased with coin and carted merrily home—look, he’d _heard_ of them—and then he’d gone for his swords. 

It hadn’t been a true monster, on the mountain—as he’d thought, more a thing manifested by simple, cruel magic, dark impulses given flesh.

The claws that had ripped through his side had been real enough, though.

* * *

“Geralt?” Jaskier’s voice was thinner than he had ever heard it, barely audible even in the steeped dark quiet of the room, but it still sharpened the moment, it seemed, he laid eyes upon Death. “I—who are you? Do I know you?”

“You’ve known me all your life, Julian Alfred Pankratz,” there was an even keel to Death’s voice now there hadn’t been before, and Geralt blinked a dark tunnel from his own eyes before he was able to snap them back open. “I’ve been waiting for—”

“ _No_ ,” Geralt said, more unwise than his last interruption, to be sure, if the sparks of pain fracturing around his chest were anything to go by. Jaskier, for all of Death’s sudden silence, didn’t seem even to hear Geralt.

“Are you—are you waiting for Geralt?” the bard’s eyes were tracked onto the floor, seeming to sweep right over where Geralt was standing without finding him. “You—that’s so much blood, you’re—you are here for him, aren’t you?”

“I am here,” Death agreed, “for the both of you.”

“No,” Jaskier said promptly, as the same time Geralt, once again, expressed his own opinion on the subject—the bard didn’t move, was keeping his eyes on the floor as though he was transfixed.

“The both of you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way this works,” Death said, and Jaskier, displaying the selective hearing he’d by now honed to an art, did not appear to take notice of that either.

“You can’t take him,” he protested, sounding exactly the way he did when he was wheedling Geralt for another hour in the tavern, or for feedback on one of his songs, and despite the ice crawling over his skin there was a pulse of something in the witcher’s chest, then. “It can’t possibly be time, come on. You have to know about all of the shit he’s involved in, the idiot literally can’t stay out of anything—”

“Hmm,” Geralt couldn’t help but interject, despite his growing suspicion that Jaskier could neither see nor hear him, and again, on he went.

“—there were basilik guts all over him for days, days! And the girl didn’t even stay thank you, and that was in a town we were just passing through when we supposed to be collecting that stupid elixir—”

“I do not concern myself with the movements of men, nor do I pass judgement upon them,” Death said abruptly. “I only go where I am called.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” the bard’s voice was dry. “Very convincing as it is, I’m afraid I’m still going to have to decline. You can’t take him.”

“I notice, Julian Alfred Pankratz, that you have yet to plead for your own life,” Death said, measured.

Geralt _growled_. He took another step forward, until he was standing at one end of the bed—Death, shrouded in their cloak on the other.

“Yes, well,” Jaskier was very quiet. “We all have our priorities, don’t we. What will it take to leave him alone?” 

Geralt blinked again, and for a second, he almost saw two of the bard—one, sitting up cross-legged, hands clasped loosely on the edge of the bed, another, pale and small, swaddled in crumpled linen, mouth still. A burr caught in his throat. 

“Take me,” his own rasping voice didn’t even stir the dust in the air, something that probably should have worried him more than it did, if he could only focus. “Leave him be.”

Death’s hood tilted down, and Geralt had the sense, somehow, that their gaze was locked on something beyond both witcher and bard.

“How rare a thing,” Death murmured, clearly to themselves. They seemed to draw up, up, and Geralt tried to straighten his grip on his sword, but there was blackness at the edge of his vision. “I have been wrong before—only on occasion, of course. Life can be so fickle, you understand. Perhaps…we may consider this more of a warning for you both?”

“I appreciate the flexibility,” Jaskier said regally, or—that’s what Geralt thought he said. Death had lifted their head, and Geralt was suddenly staring straight into the void under their cowl, until blackness was the only thing he could see. Until it was all there was.

“Hush, Geralt of Rivia, Julian Alfred Pankratz,” the words—were there words?—were whispered against the dark edges of his mind. “It’s not your time, after all.”

Someone hummed— _Jaskier_ , Geralt thought, sleepily. Geralt slept. 

* * *

“-eralt. Geralt, can you hear me? _Geralt_!”

“Jaskier—” He rockets up, eyes wild, reaching for his swords—or tries to and is pretty much immediately distracted by the throbbing pain still on his side. He blinks, takes a second to orient himself.

He’s in a bedroom at a roadside inn, sunlight streaming in through one narrow window with dirtied glass, sending lances of watery morning light through the room. There’s a narrow chair piled high with discarded clothing, silks and dark leather, a thin-necked lute resting against one wall with a short sword propped up on it, both half-covered by Geralt’s extra cloak. The lingering scent of sweat and sickness is still in the air, overshadowed by something bright and fresh and earthy—and blood, but that’s not so uncommon, for him.

He’s lying on his back next to the room’s one bed, his other sword still clutched in his outstretched hand. And in the bed, leaning over to peer at him with huge round eyes in a too-pale face, is Jaskier.

“Thank melitele ,” the bard sighs, when he sees the witcher’s eyes blink open. “Geralt, you’re okay.”

He grunts. He can still feel his skin knitting together under his ribs, and his whole body is sticky with the blood that’s collected under him and soaked into the leather. It’s going to be a bitch to clean.

He breathes in carefully through his nose, minding his ribs, and catches the bard’s scent. He needs to bathe, but he smells clean and a bit herbal, and the sweltering musk of fever is gone from his sweat. Geralt breathes out. “What happened?”

“I should be the one asking you that,” Jaskier said, and the witcher can see more of him as he slowly levers his body up, resting his sword on the floorboards to keep that hand lightly against the tear in his side. “Last I remember you’d dumped me in this room after going off on some harebrained scheme to fight an unknown beastie, and then I woke up with this in my mouth—” the bard waves some green thing too fast for Geralt to get a good look at it, thought that explains the herbal smell quite nicely—“and you on the floor covered in your own blood. Not a pretty sight for such a beautiful morning—scared the life out of me, to be honest. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Hmm,” he grumbles. The bard’s words catch at something in his mind, a dark cloak and a whispering hum. A faint image of Jaskier, still and silent and cold. He curls his lip and manages to get his feet under him. His balance tilts dangerously, and he decides to celebrate this achievement by promptly collapsing on the bed next to the bard, who hurriedly scurries to make room for him. “I’ll live.”

“No, please don’t overwhelm me with the details,” the bard mutters dramatically. He smells tired still, too, but healthy, already curling into his side like he does when he’s too exhausted to think about it. “That cut doesn’t look too deep, though, for you, which is good. You must have made it here from your fight and given me this right before you passed out into one of your little healing sleeps.”

“Must have,” Geralt rumbles, though he doesn’t—really—remember. He remembers the fight, scrambling down the mountain, and getting to the inn, but everything from there is…hazy. He remembers Jaskier, feverish, and there’s something else, something almost familiar…

“Geralt?” Jaskier’s voice was drowsy too, but almost shy in a way it never was, pulling him back from the edge of sleep he’s starting to drift into. He hums. “Did you…I mean. Was there anyone else here, when you got here? I think I saw someone, or something, but I can’t quite recall. Was there someone here?”

“Maybe the healer,” the bard is warm under his arm and the scent of herbs is tickling his nose. He can feel his side starting to heal over, and he knows he’s bloody and they’re both disgusting, but they’re safe, and they’re alive, his eyes are already closed, and he is really, absolutely sure whatever this conversation is about can wait. “Does it matter?”

“I guess not,” Jaskier yawns. “I suppose we can say thank you later…after a nap. And maybe some breakfast. And a bath. You really stink, you know.”

“Shut up, Jaskier,” Geralt mumbles. Just before he drifts off, he hears Jaskier’s quiet laugh.

* * *

The dark-cloaked figure stays at the end of the bed for a while longer, keeping watch and twisting the stem of a green, fragrant plant between spindly fingers.

“Idiots,” the figure pronounces eventually, and then leaves.

Death does not see the two of them again for a very, very long time.


End file.
